Jimmy Wales wrote:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
Since I've only just heard of these people, I
may be getting this wrong,
but it seems from what I've been reading that there are two different
Safras being discussed here. The chap who died in the fire was Edmond
Jacob Safra (August 6, 1931 or 1932 - December 3, 1999), while the chap
who bought the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" is his nephew Jacob Safra (born
c. 1950), who as far as I can tell is still alive...
Ah, this warrants further investigation, then.
Perhaps Jacob could get excited about much cheaper philanthropy to
generate a superior result. He could close the operation of
Britannica, give the Wikimedia Foundation 1/10th of what he expects to
lose, and authorize us to use the name.
I'll be the new Mortimer Adler, it'll be fun.
Admittedly, I didn't look too deeply into the possibility that there
would be two Jacob Safras. As long as my idea remained in the realm of
speculation it didn't matter much. There are two kinds of ideas that
can succeed: little conservative ones where with a lot of hard work you
might beat them out for a single, and the hairbrained ones full of
chutzpah that you knock right out of the park. A takeover of EB would
clearly fall in the latter.
Whichever Safra is involved it seems clear that his takeover of EB was
more than just a money making venture. A great deal of prestige,
idealism and philanthropy went into that equation. The key to our
winning EB could lie in how we appeal in those terms to the Safra family.
Looking into this subject leads me into all sorts of interesting
observations. In
http://slate.msn.com/id/1003924/ there is some analysis
of EB's failings, with suggestions that even the likes of Disney are
salivating for EB's scraps. But there is another observation to be
made: This is an msn site, and although it mentions how Encarta was
given the encyclopedia market on a silver platter, nowhere in the
article or in the frame is there a link to Encarta!
Our NPOV policy and our openness are a great competitive advantage, and
maintaining principles through periods of rapid growth will be a test
yet to come. I don't think that the big players in the encyclopedia
publishing game have yet fully grasped the importance of the revolution
in concepts of intellectual property. Many of them may be too concerned
with protecting fat salaries. The information has always belonged to
the people, and it's only the way that it is expressed that is
copyrightable. Until recently the people could be kept from that
information because they did not have the means to reproduce and store
it easily. Before Gutenberg only the very rich and the churches had
complete acess to knowledge, and that acess was closely guarded. The
churches, by guarding access to knowledge could control what knowledge
you would be permitted. I believe that the growth of electronic media
allows us to go one step further.
Anyway, to get my idle speculation back on track. I can see the
possibility, at least initially, of EB as a separate project functioning
as a subsidiary of Wikimedia. It could be a profit making subsidiary,
but it would be extremely difficult to be sure of this without knowing
its full finacial picture, including copyright arrangements for its
existing material. It is conceivable that its noteworthy contributors
may have insisted on retaining copyright as a condition of being
published in EB.
Asking the Safras for 1/10 of their losses is interesting, but I don't
know if it would be necessary. They will of course be able to take a
big tax loss, and making sure that what we get is free from any debt
load would be a handy feature. An understanding that we would give a
share of the profit to one of their favorite charities (of their choice)
could be a convincing argument. We already have a Wikipedian who works
for the Holocaust Museum.
It's fun to muse about these things. :-) Do we have anybody who has
personal contact with the Safras?
Eclecticology